Pretty packaging versus sustainable design

If you have attended any industry conferences this year, you can see that most brands focus on designing outer product packaging to look appealing to clinic owners and practitioners, rather than being sustainable for the environment.

It’s easy to understand the argument for retail skincare products, but for fillers, mesotherapy and other items that are used within premises, where the patient rarely sees the box, should suppliers be encouraged to pay more attention to sustainability when designing outer packaging? To answer this, aesthetic business coach and mentor Ron Myers is conducting a survey.

“As well as saving money on packaging materials and shipping costs, smarter packaging design can reduce storage space required in premises and minimise the number of bags that go to refill each week,” commented Myers.

Some companies are trying to address this: “For example, one filler company packages four syringes into the same size box that many use for one syringe. As most aesthetic supplies used in the UK are manufactured abroad, this can have a huge impact on the carbon footprint of the product, therefore it would take one shipping container instead of four to transport the same amount of filler.” In addition, reduced storage requirements for vertical aesthetic distributors (aka Wigmore, Healthxchange, etc) and reduced shipping costs direct to premises could help minimise the size of external packaging.

Eliminating plastic wrapping and shiny finishes might ensure that the box could in recyclable. However, Myers says that some practitioners have commented to the aforementioned filler company that it detracted from the brand’s image as it does not look as appealing as other filler brands.

How important is this to your business?

Do you care whether products designed to be used in your premises, rather than sold to consumers, are beautifully packaged? Could brand managers compromise with a few display packages that they show off at conferences, and then actually package the product to get to you in the most sustainable way possible? Do you think that reducing outer package size could save money in shipping costs, reduce carbon emissions, and help with storage space in your premises? Is recyclability of outer packaging something that concerns you?

Myers has created a brief survey that takes less than a minute to complete to openly discuss the topic of outer packaging, what clinics want and what companies think clinics want.

Your participation may help form an opinion, as an industry whether to pay more attention to the environment over branding. 

Complete the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SRB382Q